The passage of China's "Anti-Secession" Law has incurred definite objections from the US, Japan and the EU. US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Randall Schriver even publicly criticized the law as "a mistake."
Taiwan's government, however, should not take delight in these strategic gains obtained from other countries and passively denounce the legislation or even boycott cross-strait exchanges.
Rather, it should utilize its current advantageous position to adopt a more pro-active and progressive approach in pursuing a mutual framework for cross-strait peace and stability.
As a matter of fact, the legislation is nothing more than the legalization of China's previous Taiwan policies and a softer summary of its past declarations. To a great extent, the law is a compromise between China, the US and Japan, which have expressed serious concerns over the matter.
First of all, of the 10 articles in the Anti-Secession Law, only Articles 8 and 9 target Taiwanese independence issues and the rest are the statements about Beijing's stance on cross-strait issues, aimed not at "anti-secession" but at promoting peaceful unification.
Ironically, most articles are in violation of the objective of the law. Moreover, Article 8 of the law offers three conditions in which China will resolve cross-strait issues through "non-peaceful means."
The three pre-conditions include the fact that if the "Taiwan independence" secessionist forces should act under any name or by any means to cause Taiwan's secession from China, or if major incidents entailing Taiwan's secession from China should occur, or that in the event the possibilities for a peaceful reunification should be completely exhausted.
In fact, these conditions are very ambiguous and simply a political declaration. They fail to draw a red line to regulate China's Taiwan policy.
Some have claimed that the enactment of the law leaves China's leadership too much room for interpreting the timing of waging war against Taiwan, which is disadvantageous to Taiwan.
However, Beijing's initial purpose of enacting the law is to clearly state its stance on the cross-strait issue and even clarify the red line already drawn in order to avoid a war caused by misjudgment on both sides.
Furthermore, the right to interpret the status quo lies neither with China nor Taiwan. Just as former US assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific James Kelly pointed out on April 21 last year in his testimony on Taiwan before the US House of Representatives, "the US does not support independence for Taiwan or unilateral moves that would change the status quo as we define it."
Besides, these three conditions for waging war against Taiwan are even more flexible than the ones mentioned in the white paper on Taiwan policy released by China's State Council in 2000.
The white paper stipulates that China will not rule out the use of force if Taiwan indefinitely refuses to resolve the issue of cross-strait unification through negotiation. In the Anti-Secession Law, the conditions for Beijing resorting to non-peaceful means have become even more ambiguous and milder than ever.
To mitigate objections from the US and the rest of world, Beijing even dared not mention any wording related to "use of force" and replaced this with the wording "non-peaceful means."
Third, regarding the conditions and procedures for adopting non-peaceful means, the Anti-Secession Law clearly stipulates three conditions for adopting non-peaceful means against Taiwan.
To do so, the State Council and the Central Military Commission (CMC) shall decide on and execute the non-peaceful means and other necessary measures and report to the National People's Congress Standing Committee.
For an autocratic country such as China, the above-mentioned conditions and procedures doubtless serve as restraints on China's leadership rather than simply an endorsement of their decisions.
In the past, if political and military power permitted, the CMC could wage war on Taiwan to forcefully push unification without a collective decision by the State Council or having to report to the National People's Congress Standing Committee.
Last year, Taiwan's weak position on the international scene, which had lasted two years or so, was reversed when China proposed the Anti-Secession Law.
As a result, China was forced to adopt a milder version of the Anti-Secession Law. Nonetheless, the enactment of this law is strategically opportune from a long-term perspective.
If Taiwan can utilize this advantageous situation and adopt an active strategy in response, instead of adopting a passive approach in boycotting China, the prospects for cross-strait relations will be completely different from the confrontational approach that has been adopted by both sides over the past four years.
Last but not least, there is a chance that we can gradually construct the mutual framework for cross-strait peace and stability that President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) has proposed.
Tung Cheng-yuan is an assistant research fellow at the Institute of International Relations of National Chengchi University.
TRANSLATED BY DANIEL CHENG
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